While Tiger Woods was teeing off at Torrey Pines Thursday morning in the first round of the U.S. Open, Padres hitters were itching to tee off against Dodgers pitcher Hiroki Kuroda at Petco Park.

"The boys came out with a chip on their shoulders," Padres ace Jake Peavy revealed Thursday afternoon.

According to Peavy, Padres hitters were ticked off that Kuroda, a veteran of the Japan leagues in his first season in the majors, made comments that, to them at least, implied that defeating the Padres two months ago was easy.

"Those remarks were taken offense to," Peavy said of Kuroda's postgame comments April 4, after his victorious American debut at Petco.

Swinging like they meant business, the Padres opened with four consecutive hits against Kuroda -- including consecutive home runs by Brian Giles and Adrian Gonzalez -- and went on to a 9-0 victory that decided the three-game series in their favor. The Padres ousted Kuroda with one out in the third inning, when No. 8 hitter Luke Carlin drew a bases-loaded walk to raise the score to 6-0.

"It's not easy," said Padres No. 2 hitter Edgar Gonzalez, who singled and scored in front of Giles' home run. "He found that out."

The Padres also were charged up that Peavy came off the disabled list before the game. Peavy was making his first start since an elbow strain put him on the DL on May 14.

But Peavy, who seemingly could beat the Dodgers if he threw left-handed, said his six scoreless innings without a walk were secondary to the offense's outburst against Kuroda.

"It makes it a lot easier for me," Peavy said. "The boys are swinging the bat and showing some life. That's good to see from top to bottom. When you have a five-run lead (after one inning), you can be aggressive."

Athletes will mangle or even manufacture quotes if it provides them motivational fuel. A desire to seek an edge may have been at work Thursday as Padres players talked of demonstrating to Kuroda that major league baseball is far from easy.

"It's something we had fun with," said cleanup man Adrian Gonzalez, who drove a fastball from Kuroda over the left-field wall five pitches after Giles sent a first-pitch fastball above the right-field scoreboard for three runs.

"It wasn't like a chip. It's not like something we used to get motivated for (the game). When his comments came out, we were like, 'Whoa.' Then I talked to some of their players, and it was misinterpreted. Probably one of those words was harder to interpret. We just had fun with it. It was more like, let's go out there and play baseball, because playing baseball is easy," Gonzalez said, smiling.

"It wasn't like, 'Oh, man, we have to get him.' It was, let's have fun with it, play with it, and if we beat him, that will be good for us."

A Japanese journalist who is close to Kuroda said the pitcher never implied that beating the Padres or transitioning to the majors was easy. The journalist said that misinterpretations aren't unusual when the pitcher's postgame comments are translated from Japanese to English.